Human beings are concerned about their health and want to remain healthy. This desire to remain healthy is more pronounced when any disease or sickness afflicts someone. In today’s world health care is complex, costly and inaccessible. Accordingly, there is a requirement that healthcare should be affordable, accessible and of good quality. Health is a […]

Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Resolution on Universal Healthcare of 2012. Providing universal healthcare (UHC) is a target in the Sustainable Development Goals adopted at the UN General Assembly in September 2015. Healthcare access to all citizens is constitutionally enshrined, yet many are deprived of the basic right to basic health care services. […]

The sad demise of one of Pakistan’s leading epidemiologists and international civil servants, Dr. AbdurRab in the morning of August 8, 2015 in Toronto, Canada was a highly tragic event. Such moments raise memories and heighten emotions. Social media, colleagues, friends and family members remembered his exceptional character and rich public health service. To reiterate […]

When it comes to availability of quality medicines, we seem to have an end-to-end problem, from the very beginning of the supply chain all the way to the end. We have a whole menu of raging fires that need to be fought every day, with little respite for the affected public. We do not need […]

Just days before the horrific shooting at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan last December that killed at least 145 people (most of them children), two 40-foot ocean freight containers of medical supplies were delivered to Lady Reading Hospital. The hospital would soon become the site where most of the people injured were rushed to receive […]

Tabinda’s story is a shocking tale of abuse, survival and a woman’s unwavering will to live. She survived a gruesome attack. She was 28 years old, married off at 18 to a first cousin. He had been abusive throughout. She bore four kids despite constant abuse and stayed for ten long years. She thought that […]

World Diabetes Day is commemorated globally every year on the 14th of November, the date Frederick Banting (The doctor who discovered Insulin in 1921) was born. The day was celebrated this year by various public and private organizations and institutions in Pakistan. According to WHO, globally there are 347 million people living with diabetes. World […]

In Pakistan, fewer than 35% of currently married women use modern contraceptive methods, and unintended pregnancy is common. Population Council study 2002 unfolds that nearly 900,000 induced abortions are performed each year in Pakistan and a recent national study (2012) found that almost 700,000 women sought medical treatment for complications at healthcare facilities, mostly due […]

October 9th 2014 is marked as World Sight Day, a day to focus international attention on blindness and vision impairment. On the occasion of World Sight Day, I’d like to share my story about sight. I will connect it to the eye-care situation in Pakistan and hope that it will inspire more interest and efforts […]

Pakistan’s population scene is characterized by a low contraceptive prevalence rate ( 35.4%) and a high unmet need for family planning services (20.1%). Thus every fifth married woman in the reproductive age group either wants to postpone the next birth or does not want to have any more children but at the same time is […]

The Heartfile Health forum features commentaries, resources and updates on Pakistan and global health and population-relevant development issues. The eForum is not just a virtual discussion portal for policy issues, but also an archive and a sounding board for issues to be identified, which Heartfile frames for deeper discussion through Webinars. It also showcases patients supported through the Heartfile Health Financing initiative.